Gil Blas, Alain-René Lesage [best romance ebooks .txt] 📗

your son to you. So true is it that sickness and imprisonment were my best moral tutors; for they enabled nature to resume her rights, and weaned me effectually from the court. Henceforth, all my dear delight is in solitude; and my only business in the Asturias is to entreat that you would share with me in the mild pleasures of a retired life. If you reject not my earnest petition, I will attend you to an estate of mine in the kingdom of Valencia, and we will live there together very comfortably. You are, of course, aware that I intended to take my father thither also; but since heaven has ordained it otherwise, let me at least have the satisfaction of affording an asylum to my mother, and making amends by all the attentions in my power for the fallow seasons in the former harvest of my filial duty.”

“I accept your kind intentions in very good part,” said my mother, “and would take the journey without hesitation if I saw no obstacles in the way. But to desert your uncle in his present condition would be unpardonable; and I am too much accustomed to this part of the country to like living elsewhere: nevertheless, as the proposal deserves to be maturely weighed, I will consider further of it at my leisure. At present your father’s funeral requires to be ordered and arranged.”

“As for that,” said I, “we will leave it to the care of the young man whom you saw with me; he is my secretary, with as clever a head and as good a heart as you have often been acquainted with; let the business rest with him; it cannot be in better hands.”

Hardly had I pronounced these words when Scipio came back; for it was already broad day. He inquired whether he could be of any service in our present distresses. I answered that he was come just in time to receive some very important directions. As soon as he was made acquainted with the business in hand, “A word to the wise,” said he: “the whole procession, with its appropriate heraldry, is already marshalled in this head of mine; you may trust me for a very pretty funeral.”

“Have a care,” said my mother, “to make it plain and decent, without anything like pomp or parade. It can scarcely be too humble for my husband, whom all the town knows to have been low in rank and indigent in circumstances.”

“Madam,” replied Scipio, “though he had been the meanest and most destitute of the human race, I would not bate one button in the array of his posthumous honors. My master’s credit is at stake in the proper conduct of the ceremony; he has been in an ostensible situation under the Duke of Lerma, and his father ought to be buried with all the forms of state and nobility.”

I thought exactly as my secretary did upon the subject, and even went so far as to bid him spare no expense on the occasion. A little leaven of vanity still fermented in the mass of my philosophy, and rose in my bosom with all the effervescence of its original lightness. I flattered myself that by lavishing posthumous honors on a father who had blessed the day of his decease by no lucrative bequest, I should instil into the conceptions of the bystanders a high sense of my generous nature. My mother, on her part, whatever airs of humility she might put on, had no dislike to seeing her husband carried out with due observance of funeral pomp and ceremony. We therefore left Scipio to do just as he pleased; and he, without a moment’s delay, adopted all the necessary measures for the display of the undertaker’s liveliest fancy.

The genius of that artist was called forth but too successfully. His emblems, devices, and draperies were so ostentatious as to disgust instead of cajoling the natives: every individual, whether of the town or the suburbs, whether high or low, rich or poor, felt shocked and insulted by this afterthought parade. “This ministerial beggar on horseback,” said one, “can put his hand into his pocket for his father’s funeral baked meats, but never found in his heart wherewithal to furnish his living table with common necessaries.” “It would have been much more to the purpose,” said another, “to have made the old gentleman’s latter days comfortable, than to have wasted such thriftless sums on a post-obit act of filial munificence.” In short, quips of the brain and peltings of the tongue pattered round our execrated heads. It would have been well had the storm been only a whirlwind of passion, or hurricane of words; but we were all, Scipio, Bertrand, and myself, corporally admonished of our misdeeds on our coming out of church; they abused us like pickpockets, made mouths and odious noises as we passed, and followed Bertrand at his heels to the inn with a copious volley of stones and mud. To disperse the mob which had collected before my uncle’s house, my mother was obliged to show herself at the window, and to declare publicly that she was thoroughly satisfied with my proceedings. Another detachment had filed off to the stable-yard where my carriage stood, in the full determination of breaking it to pieces; and this they would inevitably have done, if the landlord and landlady had not found some means of quieting their perturbed spirits, and turning them aside from their outrageous purpose.

All these affronts, so revolting to my dignity, the effect of the tales which the young grocer had been spreading about town, inspired me with such a thorough hatred for my native place, that I determined on quitting Oviedo almost immediately, though but for this bustle I might have made it my residence for some time. I announced my intention, with the reasons of it, to my mother, who, considering my uncouth reception as no very flattering compliment to herself, did not urge my longer stay